25 Interesting Facts About Soviet Russia

1-5 Interesting Facts About Soviet Russia

1. The Soviet Union allowed theaters to play The Grapes of Wrath because of its depiction of the plight of the poor under capitalism, but it was later withdrawn because Russian audiences were amazed that even the poorest Americans could afford a car. – Source

2. 80% males born in the Soviet Union in 1923 did not survive World War II. – Source

3. After a Soviet hostage was found dead, KGB agents castrated the nephew of the hostage taker and sent the severed organs as well as a list of other known family members to the hostage taker. The remaining Soviet hostages were quickly released. – Source

4. The practice of focusing on disasters elsewhere when one occurs in the Soviet Union was so common that after watching reports on Soviet television about a catastrophe abroad, Russians would call Western friends to find out whether something had happened in the Soviet Union. – Source

5. During the Siege of Leningrad in WWII, 9 Soviet scientists died of starvation while protecting the world’s largest seed bank, refusing to eat what they saw as their country’s future. – Source

6-10 Interesting Facts About Soviet Russia

6. During the Cold War, the USSR was able to tell a Soviet passport was a forgery because the staples in real passports would corrode due to the poor quality of metal. – Source

7. The USSR and the USA were originally in talks to jointly go into space together during the Cold War. The USSR almost accepted but then President Kennedy was assassinated and the Soviets didn’t trust Vice President Johnson, so the plan fell through. – Source

8. USSR liberated more concentration camps than the rest of the allies combined during World War 2. – Source

9. A Soviet Union Marshal commissioned a colorless Coca-Cola that resembled vodka because he liked the taste and was embarrassed to be seen drinking coke in public. – Source

10. Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of TETRIS (1984) did not receive any royalties from one of the most popular video game titles until 1996 as the rights were owned by his employer, the Soviet government. – Source

11-15 Interesting Facts About Soviet Russia

11. From 1979 to 1992 Soviets drilled a super deep bore called the Kola Superdeep Borehole that reached 12,262m (40,230 ft) just to see how deep they could drill. – Source

12. 25 Russian soldiers under the command of Yakov Pavlov defended a building during the Battle of Stalingrad so well that it never fell. Vasily Chuikov, general of the Soviet forces in Stalingrad, later joked that the Germans lost more men trying to take “Pavlov’s house” than they did taking Paris. – Source

13. In WWII, a woman-only Soviet bomber regiment were nicknamed the “Night Witches” by German soldiers. For a successful bombing run, the Witches would cut the engine of their archaic and noisy aircraft. Gliding in, they would release their bombs before the enemy even knew they were there. – Source

14. The Soviet Union did not admit that a reactor had exploded at Chernobyl until nearly three days after radiation from the disaster set off alarms at a nuclear plant in Sweden 1000 km away. – Source

15. The German invasion of the Soviet Union caused 95% of all German Army casualties that occurred from 1941 to 1944. – Source

16-20 Interesting Facts About Soviet Russia

16. In Soviet Russia, prisoners would get tattoos of Lenin & Stalin, because guards weren’t allowed to shoot at images of national leaders. – Source

17. The Soviets made “The Hobbit” movie in 1985 with the full name “The Fairytale Journey of Mr. Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit.” The full movie is available on Youtube. – Source

18. A Soviet NKVD executioner personally killed 7000 Polish officers over a 28 day period with a pistol, working 10 hours per night and averaging a person every three minutes. He personally accounted for almost one third of the Katyn Massacre. – Source

19. The first animal launched into orbit, Laika, was found as a stray wandering the streets of Moscow. Soviet scientists assumed that such animals had already learned to endure conditions of extreme cold and hunger. – Source

20. On the eve of the Nazi invasion of Russia, a German soldier deserted to the Soviets and told them they were going to be invaded the next day. His fate? Execution by Stalin for spreading misinformation. – Source

21-5 Interesting Facts About Soviet Russia

21. George Koval, the Soviet master spy infiltrated the Manhattan project, stole nearly all of USA’s nuclear secrets, single-handedly provided the key technology for Russia’s nuclear arsenal, was only discovered to be a spy in 2002. – Source

22. In 1933 Soviet Russia dumped 6200 people on an island in Siberia and left them with only flour for food, a small amount of tools and no shelter. A month later about 4000 of them were dead. – Source

23. During the Cuban missile crisis, a Soviet Submarine came under attack from depth charges, the captain assumed WW3 had started and prepared to launch a nuclear weapon, but his executive officer overruled him. It turned out the depth charges were training rounds being used to signal them to surface. – Source

24. The physical document that dissolved the Soviet Union is missing as of February 7, 2013. – Source

25. The first manmade aircraft to successfully land on another planet and send back data was the Soviet Venera 7 in 1970. After landing on Venus, the craft sent back only 23 minutes of weak data, presumably because it landed on its side. – Source

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